


A Boy Says Forever

by aintweproudriff



Series: Dutchie Fake-Dating [2]
Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: M/M, and a surprise i wont spoil it but it's cute, this is just fluff, took me long enough to write this huh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 21:15:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15203627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aintweproudriff/pseuds/aintweproudriff
Summary: "And I hate the grocery store alone,” Crutchie stood up, putting a hand on David’s shoulder.“I know you do,” David stood up, placing his laptop on the coffee table. “Strange men talk to you in grocery stores and ask you if you’ll pretend to be their boyfriend.”“Pfft. What kind of loser does that?”





	A Boy Says Forever

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a Valentine's Day, I wrote a fic called "The Day We Met". And once upon a February 15, @carbon65 said that they would sell their pancreas on the black market for a sequel. It only took me almost five months, but I finally got around to writing that sequel, and this is that.

“Come on,” Crutchie whined. “You can’t just stay there all day.”

“I haven’t been here all day,” David said, looking up from his laptop, but even as he protested, his eyes blurred: a sure sign that he had been staring at a screen too long. 

Crutchie gave him the same look that he gave him when David wanted to impulse-buy cookies, or had drank three cups of coffee and no water, or when he wanted to adopt a kitten for their shared apartment (that was the only one of those arguments David had won, and said kitten - now a cat - was lazing on the couch at David’s feet). “You absolutely have. It’s-” he looked at his phone, checking the time “-five minutes past one in the afternoon and I’ve seen you move from that spot three times since you got there at nine this morning.”

“See? It hasn’t been all day.”

“Once was to refill your coffee. The second was to go to the bathroom after drinking two huge mugs of coffee. The third was to get your charger for your laptop, so you could continue sitting on the couch all morning.”

“I’m writing!” David said incredulously. 

“I am one hundred percent positive that I heard Hank Green’s voice talking about the end of the world,” Crutchie was obviously trying to keep a serious face, but his dimples in his cheeks gave him away. 

“Would you believe me if I said I was listening to Hank Green’s music?”

“I would not. You’ve got standards.”

David laughed, pretending to be offended. “Okay, you caught me. I’m not actually writing this paper like I should be. But I’ve got plenty of time until this done and turned in.”

“I know you do, love,” Crutchie smiled, turning the corner to go pet Puck the cat. “Which is why you should come grocery shopping with me and take a break for a while.”

“Oh, come on,” David sighed, but he was already closing out of the tab with the document. “I do need to work, though.”

“Well, maybe, but you need to stay sane and healthy anyhow. Besides, we’re out of coffee, and you’ll be angry and grumpy tomorrow morning if we don’t have any. And I hate the grocery store alone,” Crutchie stood up, putting a hand on David’s shoulder. 

“I know you do,” David stood up, placing his laptop on the coffee table. “Strange men talk to you in grocery stores and ask you if you’ll pretend to be their boyfriend.”

“Pfft. What kind of loser does that?” Crutchie left the room, presumably to put shoes on, and David smiled. The two of them made that joke, or some version of it, every single time either of them went grocery shopping. And it never seemed to get old somehow. Maybe it was just that Davey loved the story of how they met so much; it always seemed like out of a movie, like something that happened in Hollywood but never in real life. The story of him all but running up to Crutchie because he looked like the nicest person in the store and asking if he would help him show up an ex always seemed to be a hit at parties, if nothing else. One time, they had been listening to the radio and called in to share their story on a segment about the weirdest ways people had met, and they actually won the competition, as well as a gift card to a nice restaurant. The host of the show had joked that it should have been a grocery store gift card, and the two of them laughed, not commenting on how their friends had already bought them gift cards to various supermarkets across town for every single one of their anniversaries

As the two of them started walking to the grocery store, reusable bags in hand, Davey tried to think through how many gift cards and how much money that might be. They had been through four anniversaries, and had three friends who regularly bought them gift cards: twelve cards. And if he assumed that they averaged to about fifteen dollars apiece, then that totaled 180. Of course, all of their friends had bought them grocery store gift cards as housewarming gifts when Crutchie and Davey moved in together; Davey thought there were seven in total, for ten each. That added to 250. They’d probably gotten almost a month and a half of free groceries for the both of them out of their friends. Overall, that wasn’t bad at all. If that was how much it helped, Davey wouldn’t complain about the predictability of the gifts. At least they still got original gifts for their birthdays.   
It had been a good four years together. After that initial kiss outside the coffee shop (which was also like something out of a movie), the two of them had gone on many actual dates - dinners, movies, mini golfing, the works. They had even roadtripped together, alone, up and down the coast for a week. And hadn’t that been an adventure! Both of them getting tired at different times, having to step up to the plate and be the one to talk to people to check into hotels and ask for directions. They had come out of the week tired, but happy and assured that the two of them made each other better. David briefly considered asking if they should go on another trip, but banished the idea. With him getting his master’s degree, the two of them didn’t have much money to throw on frivolous things. 

It wasn’t long before they got to the store, and the two of them began idly browsing produce. Crutchie did most of the shopping, Davey too tired from all the work he’d done - or hadn’t done - that morning. But following Crutchie around was easy, natural. And especially in this grocery store, the one where they met, it was second nature for him to navigate through bins full of apples or racks of vegetables. He lost track of how long he went on like that, but it must have been a while, because eventually, they were halfway through the store. 

“Let’s stop in the holiday aisle,” Crutchie suggested. 

David rolled his eyes. “Ugh. It’s too early for Halloween stuff, it’s still September.”

“Never too early for Halloween.”

It didn’t matter if he tried to protest, and he knew that, so David followed his boyfriend to the autumnally colored aisle. They were about halfway through the pumpkin display when Crutchie turned to him. 

“I’ve got a question for you,” Crutchie said, and David didn’t miss the way that his eyes nervously flitted over his face, trying to scan if David looked put off by the sudden statement. 

“Okay?”

“So I know you remember how we met, since we were just talking about it this morning,” Crutchie looked relax, as if he was actually focused on perusing the Halloween decorations on the rack, but the way his hand and voice shook gave Davey a different idea. “Do you remember being in this aisle on that day?”

“Yeah, sure. This was where Noah was. Was that your question?”

“Right, right. Um, not exactly.” Crutchie still didn’t look at him. “He was, um, looking at the different chocolates he could buy, and I told him to buy the ones with raspberries.”

“To propose to his girlfriend with, right. We saw their wedding pictures on Facebook a few months later,” Davey recalled slowly. He remembered everything about the day they met in perfect detail. 

Crutchie bobbed his head. “Yeah. Cute pictures. Y’know, it’s a shame that there’s no chocolates with raspberries in the Halloween aisle.”

“Why?”

“I said that day that you were stuck with me,” Crutchie murmured, dropping his gaze to the floor and still not making eye contact. “I meant it.” He fiddled with the brace around his arm and took his forearm crutch off, using it to sink down to the floor and to one knee, reaching into his pocket as he did. “To make it final,” he finally looked up, opening up a tiny black box, “David, will you marry me?”

David’s mind filled with static. “Oh my - yes, obviously, get up,” he managed to say, and reached down to grab not the ring box but Crutchie’s hand to pull him up and into a hug. 

“Oh my god, good,” Crutchie breathed, and they stood there for a minute until David remembered where they were. 

“Did you -” he bit his tongue. “Did you bring me to the grocery store to propose?”

“Yep,” he laughed in Davey’s ear. “And you said yes in the grocery store.”

“That I did.”

Crutchie pulled away. “Okay. Um, can you grab my-”

“Yeah,” David bent down to pick up the crutch, shaking his head. He handed it back to his now-fiance. “I don’t know how we’re supposed to keep shopping now.”

“Me neither. I should have stuck to the plan and proposed after we bought everything.”

“Eh,” David pressed a kiss to Crutchie’s cheek and started pushing the cart. “It was cute.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so very much for reading, and let me know what you thought with a kudo or comment! You guys mean the world to me.


End file.
